Sustainability in biobanking.

T ight economic realities in clinical and research operations have spurred the need to re-examine financial models that support the infrastructure of biobanking. Finding ways to streamline operations, trim costs, and become more conscious of the carbon footprint of biobank operations has made ‘‘sustainability’’ a well-used buzzword of our time. This motivated us to organize a special symposium on biobanking sustainability at the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories’ (ISBER) 2014 Annual Meeting & Exhibits in Orlando, Florida. The topic crosses all of the sectors that ISBER represents, thus, we invited speakers from clinical, research, environmental, private advocacy, and government biobanks. The speakers were asked to focus on financial sustainability, share their specific experiences, and engage the ISBER meeting participants in an interactive discussion on the topic that could also be shared as a special issue on biobanking sustainability in Biopreservation and Biobanking. The goal of the symposium was to identify financial sustainability challenges that biobankers are facing in general and in specific sectors, their current solutions, and unanswered questions that may still need to be addressed. In preparation for the ISBER symposium, we asked ourselves how we define sustainability in biobanking and the reasons why sustainability in biobanking is necessary. Although we focused on financial sustainability as a topic, it is not the only dimension. Two other dimensions of sustainability exist: social and operational (includes environmental). Social sustainability focuses on the acceptability of the biobank and its activities at large by the major stakeholders (e.g., successful involvement of and collaboration with engagement of the patients and donors). Operational sustainability covers different aspects of efficiency such as whether the biobank is managed professionally, its environmental footprint, and also whether the biobank collects the biospecimens and data that the potential end-user will eventually need (fit for purpose). Repositories of biospecimens together with a limited amount of associated data have existed for many years in the research and pathology communities. However, only in the last two decades has the number of biobanks increased exponentially. Personalized, targeted medical treatment and prevention is leading the explosive growth of biobanks and biobanking initiatives across the world. The acknowledgment of the key component that biospecimens play in clinical medicine and research has also increased the focus on the quality and the types of biospecimens that are collected. With a few exceptions, most biobanks have been relatively small, storing a few thousands of biospecimens. As in every developing scientific discipline after the initial establishing of smaller entities, economies of scale will push for a consolidation process, e.g., fewer and bigger biobanks and biobank networks to manage the standardization, sharing, and rising costs. Consolidation and centralization does not necessarily imply a single physical biorepository facility but includes the concept of centralized control of the quality standards for collecting, processing, and storing biospecimens and data. Modern biobanking is an emerging scientific and operational area and only recently has become ‘‘professionalized.’’ Signs of professionalization of biobanking are the founding of global societies like ISBER and regional societies like the European, Middle Eastern & African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking (ESBB) or sector-specific societies like Public Population Project in Genomics and Society (P3G). Biobanking and networking initiatives like Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI) were started in Europe, Canadian Tumour Repository Network (CRTNet) in Canada, Biorepositories and Biospecimens Research Branch (BBRB) as part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the United States, and Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) as a continent-specific activity. These organizations were founded within the last 10 to 15 years. The overarching goals of most of these organizations is the support harmonization of collection, processing, and storage of biospecimens; to create data standards to annotate biospecimens and research results; to create standards to increase the quality of specimens; and increased sharing of collections to better human and global health. The leaders in biobanking initiatives have created different guidelines and best practices to support the community, and these are regularly updated to capture evidence-based standards. Recently, a technical committee has been established to develop an ISO standards for biotechnology including biobanks. The basic needs of biobanking are increasing the operational costs and threaten to outpace the expense of previous forms of ‘‘expensive’’ research infrastructure, such as animal care facilities and optical imaging units. Modeling of important considerations for inclusion in a financial management plan of a biobank is being carried out by several of these organizations around the world. Biobanking as a scientific endeavor, as well as biorepositories as explicit clinical infrastructures, undergo a transforming period from an early phase focusing on the